DRIVING MISS DAISY A REVIEW

I was lucky enough to see the original Off Broadway production of " DRIVING MISS DAISY" in 1987. With a cast consisting of Morgan Freeman,Judith Ivy and Ray Gill it was Off Broadway at it's best, ran 1,195 performances and deserved evrey one of them. Two years later it became an excellent movie winning Oscars for it's leading lady[a marvelous Jessica Tandy], best picture, and best adapted screenplay so I was looking forward to the first`Broadway production of this Pulitzer Prize winning play by Alfred Uhry, but as sometimes happens, dissapointment was not long in coming. For one thing this sweetly touching chronicle of a 25 year friendship between a southern elderly Jewish lady and her Black middleaged driver has not aged very well, and also it was a small play with a cast of three people, and it was perfect in a 300 seat theatre. However even in a reletivly small 800 seat Broadway house the play loses alot of the intimicy that was it's charm and director David Esbjornson has added to many realistic touches that spells out for the audience what they should be allowed to discover for themselves. Still, there are good things, most notably in the perfomances of the three actors. Vanessa Redgrave is achingly effective as the southern Belle forced to give up her independence after a minor auto mis-hap, James Earl Jones is magnificently dignified as the driver hired to squire Ms. Redgrave around, and Boyd Gains is fine as the son looking out for Moms best interest. The sets by John Lee Beatty and the projections by Wendall K. Harrington have an overdone look about them, but Peter Kaczorowski's lighting is just right. So while "DRIVING MISS DAISY" seems somewhat dated and the production is overdone any time spent with the magnificent Mister Jones, Mister Gaines, and Ms. Redgrave can hardly be called wasted. AT THE JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE 252 WEST 45th STREET N,Y.C. thru April 9th.